171 Dissertation on the Paintings of the middle Age.. 



loafs *. Thus, T have no doubt that, by carefully pursuing 

 these researches, we may be able to discover the source of 

 the colouring in the most distant periods of this school. 

 We may also add to these causes the custom of contem- 

 platins; the liighlv coloured dresses of the Levantines who 

 visited V^cnice ; but their painters, not having the ancient 

 models, nor the manners of the East, could not perpetuate 

 the grand style which belongs to design. 



Gothic School of the North. 



Although the general appellation of Gothic has been 

 given to the architecture of the middle age, the constant 

 contemplation of ancient monuments must nevertheless 

 force us to acknowledge certain distinctions in the various 

 styles. The Italians, tor example, gave the name of Arabo- 

 tudesco to the style of the dome of the Great Church at 

 Florence, built by ArnoUb in 1200; and they add thai it 

 is a mixuire of the Moorish or good Greek with the Ger- 

 mano Gothic. In architecture a distinction has also been 

 made among other styles, of the Saracen and the Saxo- 

 Golhic. Sculpture has not been submitted to the same 

 analyses, since its productions have been too much neg- 

 lected ; but the styles of painting were still more forgotttn, 

 and their different characters have not even been inquired 

 into. The appellation of Gothic has therefore been givea 

 indiscriminately to all those paintings of a different phy- 

 sioiinomy from those of the modern schools of Italy, and 

 a orcat confubion of idea& has consequently been the result. 

 Now, as the few paintings which were to be found in the 

 North, betore the existence ot the Florentine school, were 

 confined to some imitation of the Greek- Christian style, 

 and presented but a very sn^all lumiber of images, it was 

 thought that the Gothic style in painting was i)recisely 

 that which had so abundantly filled France, Germany, and 

 the whole of the North, with the vicious studies which 

 were brought from Italy. We may therefore sav that the 

 school which has been called Gothic, originated much later 

 than has been imagined, beginning only at the epoch when 

 the inttuence of the ancient styles had become ahnostjiull ; 

 and when caprice, the Ijarbarons taste of the times, and the 



* All the movable paintings anterior to the innovation of John of Bruges, 

 introduced at Venire by AntoncUo de Messina about the year 1450, were 

 exeouted with white of eggs, wax, or gum ; and when oit was introduced 

 into the colours, 't was merely ui.ed to finish, or to give pernianencp to, 

 the pictures already far advanced by the first processes. Several Venetiau 

 pieces ixi the Nspt Icon Museum are painiad in thi* way. 



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